Orange County Focus

COSTA MESA : School Boundary Changes Suggested

Newport-Mesa Unified School District administrators have recommended that the Board of Trustees redraw attendance boundary lines for four elementary schools in the Costa Mesa zone, shifting 189 students, to help ease overcrowding.

In addition, the administrators advocate adding five portable classrooms to Killybrooke Elementary School to accommodate students moved from other schools.

The proposal, which the board will not vote on until March, was met with public protest and calls from board members for more options.

In a presentation to the board this week, Dale Woolley, director of student services, proposed moving the north part of College Park's attendance area to Killybrooke, taking the east part of the Paularino attendance area and moving it to Sonora, and moving the south part of Sonora to College Park.

Woolley and Deputy Supt. Carol Berg met with Costa Mesa zone parents last week to discuss options for dealing with growing enrollment, which is expected to push schools to their capacity by the 1995-96 school year.

However, the group was faced with the limited options of reopening a kindergarten-through-sixth-grade school, Presidio, or adding relocatable classrooms to Killybrooke.

Woolley told the board that reopening Presidio would disrupt too many students and suggested adding classrooms to Killybrooke, which now has only one portable room. The zone's other elementary schools have no space for additional students, Woolley said.

He could not say how many families would be disrupted by reopening Presidio.

But the suggestion drew fire from residents at Tuesday's board meeting. Kathy Koenig, president of the Killybrooke PTA, said she chose Killybrooke for her children because of its small size and the individual attention students receive. "Next to Disneyland, we were the happiest place on Earth," she told the board.

Barbara Toohey, a sixth-grade teacher at Killybrooke, said she visited other zone schools and saw three to four different styles of relocatable classrooms at each.

The board will discuss the recommendation and accept public comments on it at every meeting until March.